John Blanchette: Cougs fine with role as unknowns

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Team Afterthought turned up at the North Carolina Invitational here Wednesday and took the place by shrug.

In other words, Washington State has the Tar Heels right where it wants them.

Think of something with less status than underdog – dupe, victim, road kill. Then go a couple of levels down from that, and there are the Cougars. This is probably the worst their lack of regard has dipped in college basketball circles since they were, you know, bad.

“Except when you say the worst,” forward Robbie Cowgill pointed out, “I almost think of it as the best.”

This is how the Cougars confound. They tape the “Kick Me” sign on their own backs.

Here they are, in their first appearance in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16, and naturally they’ve been ushered in through the service entrance – not to spare them from the paparazzi, but because they might get in the line of flash-bulb fire and ruin the photo. After all, Roy Williams might drop another har-yew on the locals or Tyler Hansbrough could dive on a loose ball in the middle of a schoolgirls’ game of jacks, which would require every North Carolina TV station to interrupt regular programming for a live report.

So the Cougars’ big moment has them playing the nation’s No. 1 team here on an off-ramp of Tobacco Road. The joint will be packed with folks taking a break from fretting over Dale Jr.’s restrictor plate, and none of them – save a few stragglers from the Inland Northwest – thinks the Cougars can win.

“Why would you?” said the Cougars’ Daven Harmeling. “It really is nice.”

Man, these guys aren’t college basketball’s Rodney Dangerfields. They’re a cross between Rodney and Henny Youngman – “Take my respect. Please.”

You would think that after tasting some success over the past couple of years, the Cougars could work up a little froth over this blanket disdain – and it wouldn’t be hard. Surely the idea that a team could reach the Final Four without leaving the state – the Heels won their first two games in Raleigh – warps the parameters of fair play. Not that it hasn’t happened before – the same was true in 1982 when Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Sam Perkins really needed the extra support.

“I think it’s a situation where they deserve it,” said WSU guard Taylor Rochestie.

Oh.

Other off-putting stuff: the presumption that if basketball wasn’t invented here, the college game was – and possibly even the air in the ball. It’s like the state putting “First in Flight” on license plates because two guys from Dayton, Ohio, came to Kitty Hawk for the wind.

And then there’s Carolina blue. Even Notre Dame isn’t arrogant enough to trademark a color.

Yet the only poor-me on Wednesday was issued by Williams himself, who back in 2000 won a 99-98 game over UCLA and then took a shot at slow-tempo basketball – in particular the NCAA title game the previous spring in which the halftime score had been 19-17. Dick Bennett, now the reigning godfather of hoops at Wazzu, was the tacit target, and Williams later called to apologize.

“Don’t play games,” Williams sniffed when reminded of it. “The number of people that enjoy seeing 19-18 is not as many as the number that like to see 61-60. I made a truthful statement and Dick understood it.

“You’ve got people who pick on me for saying the ACC is the biggest cocktail party, too. Well, it is.”

Bet you didn’t know Roy had it so tough. No wonder he had to cuss out Bonnie Bernstein on TV a few years ago.

Lighten up, Roy. The Cougars have.

Caleb Forrest, the backup forward – who admitted to wearing a Carolina cap when he was a kid – was talking to one of his former youth pastors who now lives in North Carolina about Hansbrough, the presumptive national Player of the Year.

“First time I saw him he reminded me of a bigger, better you,” the pastor said.

“Well, thanks, I guess,” replied Forrest.

“No,” the pastor scrambled, “you guys are always diving all over the floor, working like crazy. He’s just better.”

Harmeling noted, too, that the national punditry pretty much declared the East region as the bear of the bracket – no thanks to the Cougars.

“They started listing off North Carolina, Louisville, Tennessee, Notre Dame – and then the six, seven, eight seeds,” he laughed. “We kept listening and, nope, no Washington State. We probably don’t add to the credibility of the region.”

But then, all that matters is their own credibility.

“Dick Bennett talked to us before we left,” said Cowgill, “about this being the culmination of our careers. They’ve been preparing us to play against the best and it’s kind of fitting that right here at the end of our careers – and hopefully we’ll get to play a few more games – we get to play the best. We get to see: Did we do things the right way? Obviously, there’s more validity to what we’ve done than just this game, but you get to see if this is what it was all about.

“And,” he smiled, “it makes it that much more fun to play when nobody gives you a chance.”

At the Carolina Invitational, you’re lucky if they know who you are.